[quote=Wolfman]Yeah, get the Rick White boat it will help quite a bit with downwind speed. A tiger is an awesomely fast cat under most circumstances (should blow the doors off of almost anything else out there). However, without a spinnaker all cats are slow downwind beyond the broad reach (pictured above).
There are 2 basic tricks to improve boat speed. First get on a broad reach (about 135 degrees off the wind) and keep an eye on your wind vane and steer so it is at a right angle to the boat. As you pick up speed the wind vane will show the wind pointing further back on the boat. This is called building the apparent wind, the apparent wind direction being the sum of the true wind speed and your forward boat speed. Anyway when you this happens you can steer deeper downwind to bring with wind vane back to a right angle to the boat and ride the apparent wind. Careful though if you steer too deep you lose speed and if the wind drops off any you have to steer back upwind a bit to build up speed again. It's a constant adjustment thing.
The second is a technique called the wild thing and is used with the apparent wind technique above. This is when you are sailing down wind and you put the crew on the leeward side of the boat to raise with windward side out of the water and half the total drag. This give you an instant speed advantage. It makes you go much faster but it's a balancing act that could cause you to flip it if you aren't careful and requires even more constant adjustments.
Lastly if you add a spin (I'm assuming you aren't using one because you are going slow downwind) you use the same techniques as above except you are more likely to be double trapped off the back of the hulls to keep the boat down and the bows up. The spin adds so much sail area that you are likely to go faster downwind than upwind. All is explained in minute detail in the book.
Dave.[/quote]
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